The Majesty of Balanchine's "Serenade"

George Balanchine's "Serenade," set to Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings in C," is one amazing work of art. Last night I saw it for the second time and it took my breath away. Everyone at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, and especially the dancers who performed "Serenade," should feel very proud. After the performance I was feeling perplexed. I was quite certain that what I had just experienced was a gift of beauty of the highest order. At the same time, I had absolutely no sense of what it meant. So there's a question: does beauty need to mean something or can it just "be"? Balanchine offers just a bare tease of a story in this ballet. It's a tease I rejected: the only interpretive sense I could imagine was oriented towards geometry as a metaphor for the richness of human experience. Our lives are like lines, waves, circles... growing complex, doing and undoing, knotting and unknotting.  We are bodily creatures and "our" bodies (Balanchine is almost exclusively concerned with the female form here) are beautiful and sacred. Unfortunately, and this ballet's narrative thread reminds us, it's all temporal. Death awaits.
Feeling tremendously intrigued by this masterpiece, I did a quick search this morning and came across this interesting essay. 
I can't wait to see it again tomorrow! And I just happened to get NYCB's 2011-12 season brochure and they will be performing Serenade next May. Hope I can go.

Don Quixote in the XXI Century (1)

I'm currently rereading Cervantes' masterpiece, but now for the first time in English. (Edith Grossman's translation deserves all the praise it has received.) And here's my thought for today: Cervantes is anything but a dogmatist. The novel values freedom. (Much has been written about that.) Don Quixote's madness produces much laughter in the first part of the novel, but our knight errant is not merely a buffoon, and the essential characteristic that elevates him from buffoonery to universality is his deep connectedness. He is connected not only to Sancho, but to many of those who surround him. One of the most poignant moments in Part I is when he meets fellow sufferer Cardenio in the Sierra Morena. (Image: Don Quijote lays eyes on Cardenio. G. Doré.)

Peter Aldrich, Painter

Last week my brother Peter was featured in a Boston Globe article on educational oppor- tunities and their benefits in life after retirement. The article is accompanied by a short video on Peter's artistic vocation. I am the proud owner of one of my brother's circus paintings and I hope to enlarge my holdings before long. Peter is an insightful and expressive painter. I love the self-portrait you see in the initial image.  The eyes say something very true about my brother. They are thoughtful and wondering, with a touch of skepticism, and the lines running up the checks towards those eyes suggest concentration. Having older brothers and sisters to show me the way is an one of the great fortunes of my life. (Maybe my parents' genes were a little worn for the wear by the time cosmic chance produced me, but, wow, what a compensation!) I doubt that I am a future painter, though one never knows; I do look forward to spending more time writing. And hiking!

The Mariinksy Ballet's "Giselle"

Giselle is another good example of how simple, uninteresting surface plots can offer adequate foundations for great art. Yesterday was my first exposure to this ballet and it did not disappoint. The Mariinsky Ballet (the Kirov in Soviet times) at the Kennedy Center. Splendid! Diana Vishneva danced the role of Giselle. I had seen videos of her dancing, so I was not in the least surprised at feeling astounded as I watched her performance. I was surprised, and quite moved, by the breath-taking beauty of the corps de ballet. The group of dancers who performed as wilis, those malignant spirits who torment men, were so beautiful as to be thoroughly implausible. The elegance of their rhythmic synchronization was dizzying. Further, how can mean-spirited ghosts possibly be the source of such beauty? Of course, the storyline is just romantic whimsy: peasant girl falls in love, then drops dead when true (noble) identity of object of love is revealed. That's Act I. In Act II, ghost of girl rises from the dead to try to spare love interest (who is sincerely repentant for his deception), from torments of wilis (the ghosts of women left hanging at the altar). (The wilis force the men to dance until they drop dead! But, the dancing! The dancing really does seem supernatural. Oh, and Maria Shirinkina and the young man with her whose name I don't remember. Their solos and pas de deux in the first act were outstanding! Incredible!